Seniors have still got game

REDMOND _ These fellows are a little heavier, a little grayer, and a little bit of all that other stuff that comes with age.

But when it comes to hitting golf balls, the men of the Champions Tour can make the years melt away.

The beauty of golf is that players can compete and win well into their 50s, as evidenced by 59-year-old Tom Watson’s near-victory at the 2009 British Open _ he lost in a four-hole playoff to Stewart Cink. So when the 50-and-over set gathers for a major championship, such as this week’s U.S. Senior Open at Sahalee Country Club, the display of golf figures to be just a whisker beneath the younger chaps on the PGA Tour.

“The quality of play out here is outstanding,” said 51-year-old Tom Lehman, a five-time winner on the PGA Tour. “There are so many players who are capable of being successful on both tours.

“People look at this tour and they know the players, they recognize the players and a lot of times they’ve grown up watching the players,” he said. “And they realize these guys can still really play.”

Among them is Lehman, who has two wins in a little more than one year on the 50-and-older Champions Tour. Also Watson, who tuned up for his visit to Sahalee CC by playing in the British Open and Senior British Open earlier this month.

“No matter how old you are … it’s great to put your game on display for people and do well,” said Watson, who turns 61 in September. “And I think I still have enough game left to play well and be in contention, and that’s what I plan on doing.”

Another likely contender this week is Corey Pavin, who finished second at last week’s British Senior Open by one stroke to Bernhard Langer.

Players on the Champions Tour “know how to play golf,” Pavin said. “It doesn’t matter what you look like, it’s a matter of getting the ball in the hole. And there are a lot of guys out here that can do that.

“There are so many more good players out here, and the depth is greater and greater every year,” he said.

The challenge at Sahalee CC this week will be to take on a golf course that has tight, tree-lined fairways and asphalt-hard putting greens. The United States Golf Association, which oversees the tournament, graciously trimmed the deep rough back to 3¼ inches, but that was to insure that errant tee and fairway shots would be more likely to bounce through and disappear into the woods.

And that means accuracy off the tee and with approach shots will be paramount for would-be contenders.

“Whoever is going to hit the ball straight off the tee and get the ball in play, that’s No.1,” Watson said. “That’s the critical factor here.”

The goal, he added, “is to try to get around the golf course without getting into the rough too many times.”

Fred Funk, the tourney’s defending champion, has called Sahalee CC “claustrophobic” because of the many surrounding fir trees. “You can’t go over them, you can’t go through them and sometimes you can’t go around them,” he groused good-naturedly.

“You can’t fake it around this place. It’s so much easier to make a bogey out here than it is a birdie.”

Funk went so far as to predict a winning score of around even par on the 6,866-yard, par-70 course. “And if somebody shoots under par for four days here,” he said, “my hat’s off to them.”